Hot Topics
In developing housing for poor and homeless people, fads come and go as in other areas of American life. Twenty plus years ago when homelessness started escalating across the U.S., the answer was provide temporary emergency shelter and more apartments. After all, homeless people were just singles and families down on their luck.
When homeless people started staying in shelters too long or couldn’t hang onto their apartments once they’d move out of shelters, the answer was transition housing, a program lasting up to two years to get them ready for living on their own.
When transitional housing didn’t always get people ready or when there were no apartments to move into when they’d completed their two years, the answer was develop supportive housing, that is, permanent housing with on-site services to help people to deal with their issues so they could hang onto their housing and, if possible, enter the mainstream.
When supportive housing was seen as too picky, demanding that applicants be clean and sober before getting into the housing, the answer was Housing First, the hot topic for solving homelessness in 2005. Forget demanding that homeless people be ready for housing, just get them housed and provide them the supports they need to stay housed.
Alliance Housing’s experience is that all of these solutions work well for some of the homeless population. Since 1991 Alliance Housing has been placing singles and families in their own housing, often when no one else would take a chance on them. It is also Alliance Housing’s experience that some homeless people have to have sober supportive housing since alcohol and drugs are always why they become homeless and stay homeless.
Sober housing , however, doesn’t work for homeless people will never give up alcohol and drugs. If they’re to be housed, there has to be another model. They need a building that tolerates discrete chemical use but insists on decent behavior in public spaces. They need a building that keeps out people who prey on them, take over their apartments, and start dealing. They need a building with street-wise social workers who can help them with their mental and physical health problems. Housing First does this.